Five Reasons Why Obama Shouldn’t be Re-elected

1. Campaign First, President… Second?

President Obama is, hands down, a campaign guru.  He could probably put lipstick on an ostrich and still get its vote.  The hurdle he faces now, however, is the same the Yankees faced in the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks- in technical terms.  You can’t coast on last year’s World Series win.

Most will agree President Obama never did switch out of campaign mode.  He’s like one of those Roombas bouncing wall to wall cleaning the showcase living room your grandparents only used during your Bar Mitzvah.  The problem with Obama is that he’s campaigning like a candidate and not an incumbent president sitting on one of the muddiest thrones in the past 60 years of American history.  It’s a direct reflection of what’s wrong with American politics and campaign culture.  Spending the past few weeks hosting hefty five-digit dinners in New York City, sharing tapas with Banderas in LA, and throwing lottery private dinners with lucky grassroots campaign donors is not only tight-roping two steps back in combating partisanship in an already terribly polarized country, but an absolute insult to injury while the government remains incapable of, if not an aggravator of, ongoing political, economic, and social issues across the board in the US.  Perhaps Obama and his buddies in Hollywood and Wall Street are aware there is no cure to the bad recipe and they’re doing what they can to shore up their reserves come the double-dip in the volatile economy. Think Titanic when Cal Hockley guns down a sailor to get a spot in the lifeboat.  Maybe the billion dollar plus goal for Obama’s campaign regime should be invested in the American economy to create jobs, curtail the deficit, fix our infrastructure, and research cures for cancer since Avastin was batted down by the FDA.

For any incumbent, be it the president or a congressman, your track record in office should stand alone as your campaign message, no different from any American worker in a temporary to hire job or in a probationary period.  Frankly, if you don’t cut it and your track record says so, there’s no amount of kiss-ass that entitles you to keep on keeping on in that job!

2. Pants Down Foreign Policy

In October 2010 I remember flagging down a tuk tuk in Bangkok and catching a ride with a Thai gentleman who was wearing a Jets ballcap and reminding me over and over again during the three-hour wat tour that ‘Obama good, Obama good.’  Ditto in Vietnam, Lao, Dubai, and even Afghanistan.  Certainly Obama is well-received internationally and still, even after three years of an arguably poor presidency, his image abroad remains a glittery prospect.  But when it comes to foreign policy in its entirety, the idolization phenomenon is about it.

His 2008 platform concerning Israel-Palestine promised to nurse a constructive two-state solution.  Today, we’re looking at a radical Israeli regime under Netanyahu that continues to stoke the fire by building settlements and a bipolar Palestine that was awarded UNESCO recognition without US approval.  Where does Obama stand on this?  Somewhere in the middle of an ongoing cafeteria bout over a few hundred square miles of desert with pudding on his face. 

Afghanistan and Iraq are not coming to responsible conclusions; they’re hurdling to the ground like the final season of Lost.  The withdrawal in Iraq is set to close at the end of this month and Vice President Biden has the nerve to use adjectives like ‘success’ despite having to fly into Baghdad at night unannounced because the security situation is still a nightmare.  In the Afghan war, the relationship between Pakistan and the US is becoming one of clear disdain reminiscent of a divorced couple in an enduring Battle of the Sexes.  The Taliban continue to shore up support, violent incidents are on the rise, Karzai has ravaged his own country and will likely be granted asylum in the US in 2014 in the form of a beachfront home in Nantucket because too many people want his head on a pike, and stability is non-existent.  Obama’s plus point in these conflicts? The killing of Osama? I’d say it goes to Panetta and Clinton.

The list rolls on.  Guantanamo is still open.  There really wasn’t ever any alternative resolution to that one.  US military expansion has been extended to Australia to curtail China while the greatest security threat China poses is if the entire population took a piss and drowned us.  Under Obama’s watch, over 21 tons of tear gas have ended up in Cairo so the SCAF can further clamp down on protestors and guarantee a transition of power to the opportunistic Muslim Brotherhood.  Gaddafi was kicked out of the peep show both, hurrahs all around the table, except now we’re left with a post-Saddam Iraq on loop scenario.  Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and other repressive regimes continue to giggle, decay, and murder their civil populations while Obama drifts in between wagging a finger and mailing blank checks to monarchial leadership that can’t even send a singing card as a thank you to the American taxpayer.  That’s a lesson Burma’s military junta learned when they offered Clinton a meet and greet.  Have a one night stand with the US and you too can get 1.2 million dollars for free! 

3. Say What They Want You To Do, But You Don’t Have To Actually Do It: Global Warming

Environmentalists should have learned from the Al Gore fiasco that just because a politician flouts your banner doesn’t mean he’s not going to burn fuel and over-consume with a private jet and multi-million dollar mansion.  Global warming, environmental protection, and so on remain touchy subjects in the US. Fox and conservatives swear global warming is some mad hoax.  Whether or not that is true is irrelevant.  The point is why the hell wouldn’t you want to better the planet and where the heck is President Obama when it comes to actualizing this.   

In 2009, Obama failed to shore up support for a bill limiting pollutants, which ironically led to its defeat in a then Democratic-controlled Senate.  The same year, Obama agreed to greenhouse gas reductions in Copenhagen as a beef-less rhetorical promise, something that has become more or less a habit with the Obama administration.  Despite pledges against the Keystone pipeline, Obama will probably figure out a way to worm past the opposition.  You don’t need to do what you say, just say what they want you to do! 

The issue of the environment exposes two critical problems when it comes to President Obama and the Oval Office.  One, he’s indecisive even when it comes to issues his own fans rally behind.  Two, he can’t deliver a sticking point.  A few months ago in five minutes with a few pictures I convinced three young Republicans that environmental-friendly policies are not absurd tree-hugging tirades nor are they products of global warming propaganda, they’re simply good ideas.  Pollution in South Korea’s city of Daegu is so nasty that at dusk it looks like it’s caught in a fart bubble.  Bangkok is such a pigsty, some canals in the city are off limits to boats because they get caught up on mounds of trash and islands made of baby diapers. 

If a hamster shits in a cage, someone has to clean it. 

Sure in the short run, big business might suffer a profit thorn for doing the right thing, but in the long run we won’t be paying medical bills for health problems or combating water shortages because the rich in Las Vegas decided it was alright to drain the Colorado River to play golf in a bloody desert.  Someone somewhere in the political gladiatorial ring needs to clamp down on environmental abuse in a common sense way; President Obama continues to prove over and over again that he’s definitely not that man.    

4. It’s You, Stupid!

The underestimated minority in America remains the independent swing-voter.  The only politically trustworthy constituency in America also remains the independent swing-voter.  In 2008, disgust for the GOP as an entirety coupled with the underlying slogan: ‘It’s pretty much everything, stupid!’ guaranteed Obama and his Change machine a win among independents.  Since 2008, however, Obama has sorely abused the independent vote and come 2012 the only real reason for the swing-vote loss will be a mirror mumbling: ‘It’s You, Stupid!’

Now, if you’re independent, it’s because you completely agree with Mark Twain-

“Look at the tyranny of party — at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty — a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes — and which turns voters into chattles, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.”

If you’re independent and you voted for Obama, it’s probably because you assumed he would focus on vetting the government and change the political culture that continues to destroy America.  Instead, Obama has done nothing other than epitomize the issue with American politics.  Self-serving party agendas fronted by political madmen that value profit politics over positive politics while treating the voter as nothing more than a statistic of highly likely, likely, and unlikely to vote for myself and my fellow block of candidates.

Hurrah.

5. The Cost of Inaction and Not Focusing on the Real Issue

If you think now is bad, consider this-

ASCE’s American Infrastructure report card estimates that it will take 2.2 trillion USD over the next five years to repair outdated infrastructure, a crisis that isn’t even mentioned in political dialogue.  Inefficient energy grids and transportation will only further debilitate an economy already in decline.  Furthermore, ASCE estimates that in 10 years 45 states will be facing water shortages!  How can America guarantee any quality of life when the basic necessities are on the rocks?  Instead of fully investing in a progressive state-federal model of revamping infrastructure, the federal government under President Obama is only piece-mealing its efforts.  Perhaps Denver’s new light rail transport projects that have boosted tourism and the local economy should be rewarded, replicated, and serve as a positive for the outcome of action over inaction.

American public education is in decline while student debt continues to rack up across the board.  Consequently, we’re not only producing unqualified, mediocre graduates, but indebted youth!   The chain effect in the long-run is obvious.  Massachusetts’ education system is one of the few that produce competitive results in the global arena.  If big government doesn’t step back and actualize models of success across the board, bad action will pan out to become just as much a detriment as inaction.

With nearly 1 in 4 Americans now overweight, concerns for individual health are mounting.  Affordable health care for every citizen is a valid objective, but if individual American health isn’t a focus as a means of pre-empting pending health issues, is affordability even in the cards?  However, if Spain is slipping into the slumps because it can no longer afford to support its social medicine programs, what are the US prospects for realistically actualizing Obama’s healthcare plan, especially with 15 trillion dollars worth of debt?  Look out Sally, you might have to sell your kidney on Ebay to co-pay with the government on a routine checkup! 

President Obama, congress and the rest of the federal government have done nothing more than peddle an entrenched tradition of pointing fingers and criticizing while failing to even begin to solve the problems and assume responsibility.  The cost of inaction will surely translate into the cost of re-election.

So we can only hope.